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Architecture – Its all about Stakeholders – Part I

In this three parts article, I will introduce the concept of how the success of an architecture depends on the relation with the Stakeholders. Part I will describe the influence of Stakeholders in the success of an architecture, then Part II e III will describe how to communicate and create a common ground between the architect and the Stakeholders.

Stakeholders

A Stakeholder is: “individual, team, organization, or classes thereof, having an interest in a system” (ISO/IEC 42010).

From the definition, we can observe something all Stakeholders have”…interest in a system”. This interest can be from a perspective of the customer who is buying the system and follows closely all the steps in the creation of the product, until someone, anonymous, who just uses it, like a person or system buying a ticket to a game. So, the objective of an architect should be building a system maximizing the satisfaction of all Stakeholders.

An architecture is, therefore, built around the Stakeholders needs. The majority of the Stakeholders are people, so the human variable enters in scene very strongly in the construction of the system. Things like negotiation, agreements, meetings, communication, expectations management, are skills the architect should dominate.

An architect is not a Project Manager but should work very closely with him. The success of a project from the Project Manager perspective is the satisfaction of the Stakeholders, as so for the architect. That’s the reason, for some many times we see the architect as a project manager too.

The process of developing an architecture evolves thinking, technical skills and a lot of communication with Stakeholders. The Stakeholders, usually are persons who don’t understand technicalities. It is necessary, for the architect, to create a way to expose his/her views to them, to create a common language of understanding. For that, we need Views and ViewPoints, something I will talk about on the Part II of this article.